Signs your garage needs organizing:
• Your entire wardrobe is gray to disguise the marks from squeezing past your car.
• You have to buy a third set of crutches, because you can’t remember where in the garage you put the pairs you bought the first two times you stumbled over your kids’ sports equipment.
• You’re just tired of the mess.
Whatever the reason, now’s a good time to start.
If a survey by the Lehigh Group is any indication, many of us need to. The Pennsylvania company, which makes the Crawford brand of storage devices, found that nearly 40 percent of respondents had tripped over clutter in their garage, 22 percent had accidentally hit something while parking a car and 27 percent had hit an object with a car door.
Organizing a garage involves more than cleaning it out and putting things back in neater piles. It requires culling your possessions and devising a plan for handling what’s left, and it takes time and work.
But if you do it right, you’ll be better able to keep things under control. And that means you won’t have to do it again.
That’s what Angie and Mickey Remen are hoping, anyway. Last weekend the Remens were still putting things back after Tallmadge, Ohio, company Garage Closets Inc. finished installing storage cupboards in their Richfield Township, Ohio, garage.
The garage had become a typical catchall space — shoes, bikes and gardening equipment scattered on the floor, tools crammed haphazardly on shelves and little room left for vehicles. Now the garage is lined with clean, white cabinets, and Angie Remen is trying to decide what to hang on the pegboard above her new potting bench.
“It’s unbelievable,” Mickey Remen said of the change. “I don’t know how it’s even possible.”
The Remens were lucky enough to have professional help, but it’s not essential to hire a contractor or invest in built-in cabinetry to have an organized garage. What is necessary, experts say, is forethought.
Getting started
Figure on garage organization being a big job — possibly more than a day, if you have a lot of stuff. If the job is overwhelming, start with just the floor, suggested Joanna M. Quandt, a professional organizer who runs the company JMQ Professional Organizing Services in Copley Township, Ohio.
Decide before you start where you’ll put everything during the organizing process. The Remens were able to use their trailer for temporary storage, but you might need to use your yard or perhaps a covered area such as a patio. Work on a nice day, so you can keep your stuff outside without worrying about it getting wet, Quandt noted.
Designate different areas of your yard or temporary storage area for general categories of items — sporting equipment, tools, toys and so on. Then, as you remove things from the garage, you can sort them at the same time.
Take the opportunity to rid yourself of the things you don’t need, so you’ll have less to organize. Letting go of a possession can be hard, but “have a good reason for keeping it,” advised Jim McCourtie, president of Garage Closets and the man who helped the Remens create a plan for their garage. Don’t keep anything that’s broken or anything you acquired “just in case,” he said.
Where to put stuff
Once everything’s culled and sorted, you can start thinking about how to store it.
Knowing what you have to store will help you choose the right options. Home centers, hardware stores and specialty retailers carry a huge array of devices, including hangers for everything from hand tools to wheelbarrows. You’ll find cupboards, shelves, magnetic strips for holding small tools, bins and racks for toys and sporting equipment, peg boards and even hinged hooks that swing out of the way when they’re not in use.
Or use what you already have, Quandt said — old bookshelves, chests of drawers or a simple board attached horizontally to the wall, with nails and hooks for hanging things.
“It doesn’t have to be fancy,” she said. “It just has to be useful.”
Make sure shelves, cupboards and hooks can hold the weight of your stuff. Garage Closets’ cabinet system, for example, uses a special hanging rail that allows its cabinets to hold 400 to 500 pounds each, McCourtie said.
Most hooks and other hardware are labeled with a safe working load, said Jamie Ibrahim, product manager for the Lehigh Group.
Consider materials, too. Particleboard cabinets are fine if they won’t be exposed to a lot of moisture, such as washing the car in the garage, but in a wetter environment, go with something water-resistant, McCourtie said. Metal shelves can rust if they’re exposed to dampness.
McCourtie prefers the uncluttered look of enclosing everything behind doors, but that’s largely a matter of preference. Keep in mind, however that garages tend to be dirty. Food, clothing and anything else you want to keep clean should be enclosed, he said.
Plan to store like items together, Quandt said, and strive for one goal: Easy in, easy out. The easier it is to get to things and put them away, the more likely you’ll be to keep the garage organized.
Go vertical
Most garages are fairly small, especially once you fit the cars in. So instead of putting a lot of things on the floor, make use of vertical spaces, said Tom Russo, brand manager for the Lehigh Group.
Getting things off the ground has benefits beyond maximizing square footage. Concrete garage floors are often damp, so elevating storage keeps items out of contact with moisture. It also makes it easier to put dangerous items out of children’s reach, Russo said.
McCourtie typically hangs cupboards at least 10 inches above the floor, so a broom will fit underneath.
If space is tight, hang cabinets at least 51 inches from the floor so you can pull a car underneath, he said. Consider 12-inch-deep cabinets on side walls, which protrude less than standard cabinets.
And don’t forget the rafters, Ibrahim said. If they’re open, you can use them for overhead storage, particularly for things you don’t use often. You can buy hangers and other devices designed for rafter storage.
Providing enough clearance around your cars ensures you can get in and out easily, without bumping into anything.
Allow enough space for vehicle doors to open and for a person to walk around the car, Russo said. Plan for enough space so you can walk comfortably while carrying groceries, without having to walk sideways or squeeze through any space.
Measure the spaces where cabinets will go to make sure there’s enough room to open cabinet doors when the cars are in the garage, McCourtie said.
